


Afloat

by AdamantEve



Series: Stranded [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, major anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 01:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21045866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantEve/pseuds/AdamantEve
Summary: Ever since Jughead sent her away to supposedly follow her dreams, Betty had felt afloat, never feeling the earth beneath her feet. Just water. And if she dared to stop moving, the ocean of things would suck her into its depths.On good days, she felt buoyed. The paddling seemed effortless, almost like a tide was gently pushing her up and along.Then there were days she felt like she was in the eye of a hurricane, and that no matter how hard she tried to stay above water, there was always a bigger wave coming to engulf her.OR, Betty's POV in Tethered.





	Afloat

When she saw him standing in the hotel lobby, his dark curly hair wild and bellying the crisp and dapper look of his tux, she took a moment to take him in.

She hid behind her corner, half her face concealed behind the polished carved wood of architectural accents. 

He was so handsome, waiting, perhaps for Archie, so they could head to the Chapel together.

Betty became immediately conscious of the material of her wedding gown peeking from the corner. She didn’t want to be caught staring. Longing.

It felt wrong to be so sad, to be so filled with regret on her wedding day. 

She was supposed to be happy. That’s what she’d felt when she said “Yes!” to Phillip’s proposal. 

He was such a nice guy, after all.

Her eyes stung with heartbreak and fear. 

Tentatively, she took a step back, and then another, and then she was running.

**********************

Ever since Jughead sent her away to supposedly follow her dreams, she’d felt afloat, never feeling the earth beneath her feet. Just water.

And if she dared to stop moving, the ocean of things would suck her into its depths.

On good days, she felt buoyed. The paddling seemed effortless, almost like a tide was gently pushing her up and along. 

Then there were days she felt like she was in the eye of a hurricane, and that no matter how hard she tried to stay above water, there was always a bigger wave coming to engulf her.

*****************

Betty had always been driven to do things. She never sat around and complained. She never stewed on things for too long. 

If she did, it was to plan on what course of action she was going to take, then she’d get on her feet and _ work _ her ass off. 

It accomplished several things, the most important thing being it got her closer to her goals and it took her further away from the things that made her unhappy.

So the day she went to Jughead’s trailer, her acceptance letter to Boston University on-hand, and he turned her away by telling her to _ go, _she first drove back home in tears, wept in her bedroom until dinner, then dried her tears and proceeded to list out the things she would need to go to school is Massachussettes. 

She was by no means done hurting. Jughead may as well have sank his switchblade through her chest, and the pain, she realized, persisted with crushing heaviness throughout the first year. It only got easier with time—never went away.

But that day, after she had squeezed the tears from her body, she clung to productivity. She methodically set goals: furnish her dorm room with just the essentials, get a job, be on the lookout for post-dorm accommodations, follow a budget, stay fit, lean into her opportunities…

Everyday thereafter, she set her goals to looking forward, not back. 

Most days she succeeded, but there were far too many days she would fall off the wagon, asking Veronica or Archie about Jughead or going online to check on his social media updates.

In fairness, she did so with the hope of growing past her hangups. Perhaps if she could hear about him without dying inside, she could start to feel whole. It was the same reason she continued to send him written greeting cards on special occasions. Warm, sincere, but short missives that he never replied to. It was all part of her self-imposed therapy. 

But doing so never helped her move forward.

Her usual response to any spiral that resulted from her one-sided outreach was to first, work harder, and if that wasn’t helping, find men to date. 

While she tended to take things relatively slow with them, occasionally leading up to sex, she went into revenge sex mode _ one time— _ on that day, while browsing Instagram, she saw a picture of Jughead _ and some other woman _. They were cozy on his motorcycle. Not kissing, thank God, but close enough, with comments ranging from “Cute!” to “Are you together yet?”

Her blonde hair, bright smile, and striking blue eyes made Betty want to hurl. 

She found herself overwhelmed with jealousy and she had no one to listen to her rant about it. She had put on such a perfect mask of normality that she didn’t even want to go to Veronica for this, and being the woman of action that she was, her brain translated positive action to getting laid.

So she went on Tinder and “vented” with some random, good looking dude.

She had already forgotten what he looked like, except maybe for the fact that he was the opposite of Jughead in every way.

Still, that episode didn’t ruin her for future social media venturing. Sucker for pain that she was, perhaps, she was willing to risk emotional storms to find out if Jughead was doing okay.

For the most part, he seemed to be alright. After that one photograph on Instagram, the same woman never made an appearance again. There would be other women lurking in the background, but there wasn’t another couple photo like the one that sent her spinning.

On a certain level, that episode did make her realize how deep down, she was harboring some kind of hope that she and Jughead would find their way to each other again, and that seeing him move on hurt so much because she hadn’t moved on quite as she’d hoped, herself. 

*********************

Phillip was overwhelmingly rational and perfect given the relatively long string of what Alice had called mediocre men. 

He was Cooper-approved, society-approved--hell, he was life-approved. 

Phillip was handsome, successful, kind, and most of all, he thought the world of Betty. 

Betty believed she had found love, happiness, and perhaps more importantly success, given that her career was taking off, writing for the Boston Globe, keeping a segment with Boston Public Radio station, and getting regular invites to write features for major publications like Rollingstone, Esquire, and the Atlantic Monthly. 

Her life was in order, and while she could admit to the dull ache that had seemingly taken permanent residence in her heart where her love for Jughead Jones used to be, she felt joy when Phillip asked her hand in marriage. 

She had worked hard to get to this point of her life--successful, strong, healthy, and being in a stable, loving relationship. 

Also, she was _ very _happy for Jughead’s success in his own field. She always knew he would publish a book one day, and his first one had been the talk of the publishing world for months after it had hit number 1 on the NYT Bestsellers list. 

In a moment of weakness, perhaps, Betty had proudly told Phillip that Jughead was one of her best and oldest friends. 

Phillip, being the steady and nice bloke that he was, easily said, “My dear, why didn’t you tell me? We have to invite him to our engagement party, along with that ginger fellow of yours--”

“Archie. He is _ not _my ginger fellow. Stop calling him that. I hadn’t had a crush on him since sophomore year…”

How she had said that without choking on all her secret history with Jughead, she didn’t know, but she barely blinked, and she thought it best at the time not to go into it any more than she already had. 

So the invites went out, and of course Jughead would be invited to all the important pre-wedding events to come.

Betty thought this was a good thing. This wedding was important to her and it was only fitting to have the people closest to her there. 

********************

When Jughead appeared at the restaurant doors of their engagement party, Betty had to look away to mentally prepare herself for how incredibly handsome he looked. 

As her fiance greeted guests warmly from their table, Betty was mentally telling herself to get her shit together, because suddenly she was panicking, and she was forgetting all the techniques she used to have at her disposal to calm her anxiety. 

Suddenly she was back in the water, thrashing about, as if she had forgotten how to swim.

She clung to Phillip’s arm, perhaps to ask for help, but he had merely given her a pleasant smile and said, “Ugh, I know, love. I’m already exhausted. We’ll get through this, you and I.”

The stare she gave him was one of desperation and helplessness. At least that was how she thought she looked, but she realized that there were a lot of things about her that Phillip didn’t know, and perhaps there had been a time he might have recognized that something was wrong, but she had _ conditioned him _to see that expression on her face and think, “Oh, Betty is tired of this, that’s all.”

Because in the past, she would have explained it exactly that way. “Oh, I’m just tired. Don’t mind me. I’ll carry on.” 

Phillip used to always follow up with, “Are you sure? We don’t have to do this, you know.” And she would always reassure him that she would be alright. Eventually, he would stop following up, because he believed in her strength. 

Phillip was a good egg, but she never realized how thoroughly dishonest she had been to him and to herself until that night of the engagement party. 

Jughead had come up to her, finally, and with her hands pressed between his, he had said, “I’m happy for you, Betty.” 

The kiss that he pressed to her cheek sent the waters in her mind churning into a whirlpool, and when he said that she and Phillip were perfect together, she was drowning. 

It almost felt like betrayal. She wanted to scream, _ how can you say that? You know I hate that word! _

But she didn’t need to scream, because with a single flicker of her gaze, he had understood what his words had done and followed it up with, “Perfect in the best way, Betts.”

He still knew her. Still understood her, and the whirlpool inside her slowed to a more manageable storm. There were still a million thoughts running through her mind, still a gale of emotions tossing her about in the water, but she managed to say thank you. She managed to say _ his name _without falling apart. 

There were too many guests, and Jughead took himself away to a different table, far back in the room. 

From what she saw of him thereafter, he seemed to be calmly awaiting the ceremonies that went with this sort of occasion. 

The whole time people were giving speeches, she kept thinking of ways to see Jughead alone. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to him. She didn’t know if there was anything left to _ be _said, but she knew that if they just had a moment, she would know what to say and do, but Jughead was gone before the speeches were over. 

Distraught and biting back tears, she sent him a text. ** _I’m sorry I missed you before you had to go._ **

He didn’t reply and she ended up crying in the restaurant bathroom as their guests began to leave. 

Later, as she and Phillip drove home, she realized that she couldn’t bear to be so dishonest with Phillip. She couldn’t stomach the guilt. She expressed her trepidation for the wedding. 

“Do you think we’re going too fast?” Betty asked, her hands steady on her lap but her nails digging in hard into her palms. “I mean, we can take our time with this wedding. In fact, we should.”

Phillip seemed worried for her concerns, but not _ too _much. He expressed optimism, saying that her feelings were natural, that while they could take it slow, he was very much excited to be her husband, officially. “We act married, anyway, yeah? We’re just signing it on paper for the wedding, is all. Let’s talk about this again in the morning.”

She wondered where she had gone so wrong with Phillip. She had presented herself so perfectly to him, so well balanced, that he didn’t think that there was a chasm beneath the feelings she was showing on the surface. 

She couldn’t blame him for any of it. She had done this. She had caused this perception of her in the man she had agreed to marry.

*******************

This was not the last conversation she would have with Phillip regarding the wisdom of their wedding. 

In the months to come, every occasion she caught a glimpse of Jughead and heard his voice, everytime she caught Jughead staring at her or vise versa, she felt a wave of self doubt and loathing, and she would go to Phillip, asking him in different ways whether they were doing the right thing: _ Do you think we’re making the right decision about the flowers? Are we really going to go with that menu? The cake looks frivolous, don’t you think? I know it’s close to our wedding date, but I couldn’t seem to decide on this dress--maybe that means something. I can’t take any of this obsessing anymore, perhaps we should move our wedding date. I don’t think we’ll be ready on time. _

And Phillip, perhaps caught up in his own vision of their perfect wedding, carried on optimistically, never wavering from the course, never thinking there was more to her doubts than pulling off a flawless event. 

Inside she was screaming. The hurricane was raging again. Everyone was expecting this to happen. Nobody had a reason to think that anything was wrong. 

She told Veronica her doubts, but not _ why _she was having doubts. 

“Call it off,” Veronica had told her in her usual, straightforward fashion. “Why would you put yourself through this if you weren’t sure, B? Call off the wedding.”

Veronica’s scorched earth approach almost always scared the hell out of Betty. Ultimately, it was Betty who would end up talking herself out of her panic, because Veronica dealt in extremes. She did not suffer the middle part of things--she always went for the conclusion, and Betty was not quite like that. 

Betty mused that there had been a time that she was pretty damn ruthless, herself, but that was when she was dating the Serpent King, when indecision could mean the death of people. 

Deciding on whether she should or shouldn’t marry Phillip seemed a lot less alarming in comparison. 

*************************

So on the day of her wedding, when she saw Jughead at the hotel lobby, and she knew, in her very soul, that she was still so deeply gone on Jughead Jones, she ran the other direction, and when she told Phillip, first by phone, that she wasn’t going to marry him that day, and then later by texts, when his first reaction on the phone had been, “Darling, cold feet is _ natural,” _she knew she beyond a shadow of a doubt that she should’ve done this months ago. 

*******************

Of course Jughead found her in the Blue & Gold. Of course he would be the one. 

And when he sat across her, him in his dapper tux and her in her wedding gown, she felt, for the first time in years, to be wading in shallow waters.

“I think you have to _ wear _ something _ old _ and something blue. Not _ be _in it.”

Even when she was crying, she could feel the laughter bubbling up her chest. He always had that perfect mix of wry humor and drama. He was never laugh-out-loud hilarious, but she liked his old-timey sarcasm best. 

He offered a handkerchief and she dabbed her eyes with it. “My heart feels old. Feels blue, too.”

He was quiet for a moment, probably wondering if he should give a clever quip back. He went for the classic, as he so often did in the past. “What’s going on, Cooper?”

Always so willing to listen, Jughead. She missed him. She missed how they had such an instinct for one another. Was glad to see that at least that had remained between them.

She sniffed, touching the silken JJ embroidered on the corner of the handkerchief. She remembered giving this to him on his birthday. “God, I gave you this nearly a decade ago, Juggie. It looks unused.”

“Eight years ago, actually.” He gave a soft scoff. “And just how many white handkerchief occasions did you expect the Serpent King to attend?”

She supposed she hadn’t exactly thought of it that way. She had wanted to give him something a bit more refined, because she knew people thought he was trash, and because she wanted to let him know that she thought of him as worthy, _ valued, _ as someone she believed could do great things and not be stuck on his predetermined future. “I ruined many of these before I got the JJ _ just _right. I wanted it to be perfect for you.”

“I’d have loved it if it were as crooked as an S.” 

She believed him. He loved her so much. He looked at her and she felt like she was everything to him. It was probably why she couldn’t believe at first that he had broken up with her. She thought he would love her no matter what. She thought that what they had would be forever. 

He was looking at her now with that same adoration. Or maybe she was hoping he was. Maybe she was imagining things. These last few weeks, she had hoped and prayed that they would have a moment alone and one or both of them would say _ something, _anything to give her the resolution she needed.

Now was that moment. “I know, but I never wanted you to feel that I took you for granted. I wanted to give you my best, too, even if you didn’t demand it from me. Even when you loved me imperfect and broken.”

His brows knot. “You were never broken to me, Betts. I pushed you away because I was afraid to be the one to break you.”

His words would hit her harder than he realized. She always had a sense that he had broken up with her _ for _ her. To _ save _her. It made her mad to a certain extent, because how dare he take the choice away from her? But she understood, too, that he had a narrative of his own to control. He wasn’t so much taking the choice from her as he was making a choice for himself--that he wasn’t going to be responsible for the destruction of others. That he had taken on the role of protector not just for her, but for everyone around him. 

She loved him for it, but she also hated the choices he made because of it. 

“Together we were whole, Jug. I haven’t really been in one piece since.”

He looked crestfallen. “Betts, how can you say that? Your career—your relationship—your life is the stuff of dreams!”

“Not my dreams!” she cried, her anger rising to the surface, but just as quickly as it surged, it receded, leaving her helpless to the inevitability of the past. For the most part, she had gone on to make something great of her life, even if her heart was broken the entire time. “At least not all of it… I don’t—I can’t marry Phillip. I can’t. He’s not…” _ He was never you. _

She didn’t go on.

“Then why did you tell him, yes?” 

Why, indeed? “I thought I wanted to. I thought he was my chance at love.”

She knew that look of pain on his face. Knew how his sympathy for her was born of knowing her so, so well. “Oh, Betts…”

She took both his hands in hers and he didn’t resist. “I went to you before, remember? It felt like a hundred years ago, but it was the day I got my acceptance letter to Boston University. And I asked you if I should stay. You told me to go. And I did go, because you didn’t love me anymore.”

It hurt to say the words, but in a way, it was a good hurt. Like the act of removing a splinter from her heart. She had never said those words out loud to anyone else, and of course she would only ever say them to him.

The look of agony on his face went straight to her heart. “Betts, _ no. _Please, no.” 

She wouldn’t let him stop her. This was too important. “But these last few weeks, I just—I felt something. If you tell me right now that I was imagining everything—“

Before she could finish, he was kissing her and she was breathless with the intensity of it. 

Her heart was soaring, and the feel of his arms tightening around her secured her like an anchor to port. 

Remembered caresses became real, and that part of herself that felt unwhole started to fill once more. She was losing breath, again, but this time in a good way. They came up for air, their lips still touching. 

“I _ never _ stopped loving you, Betty. Never. It was the _ one thing _ that gave me the strength to let you go. I need you to understand this. And look at the places you’d gone. The heights you’d reached.”

She wished he would stop thinking that he would’ve been a burden to her, that he would’ve weighed her down. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could have stopped her from making both of them move forward. She would have done everything for both of them to get the life they deserved. 

She shook him gently by the collar of his coat, telling him softly all of her thoughts and dreams, all the ways they were better, together, and how they would’ve lifted each other up. They had a lot to talk about, still, but this leap in their relationship felt exhilarating. 

She wanted to be with him. She wanted to make up for years of being apart. She wanted to touch him and caress all the parts of him that would stoke their desire. She’d gone too long without that passion. 

Her kiss was anything but chaste and she whispered that she wanted him as her lips feathered his. 

He groaned, and she knew he was giving in, but he asked about the wedding, and as absurd as it seemed, she had actually forgotten about it for a few blessed minutes. 

“I’ve called it off. I told Phillip I can’t. I told him I was in love with someone else.” She’d been trying to tell Phillip the last few months this truth, but her courage and words had failed her. 

Jughead cupped her face, his thumb running lightly against her cheek as he looked up at her with his adoring gaze. She missed that look. Missed the way he looked at her just like that. There had been nothing like it. “I wanted to call you. Before all this. Before the engagement.”

She understood the subtext of his words. “Not sooner?”

“I didn’t have anything to offer before that.”

There it was again. She and he were going to have to work on those issues of self-worth. “Offer? I wouldn’t have asked for anything.”

“I was a thug. I was nothing.”

Her furious conviction swelled. “You were _ something, _ to me!”

His eyebrows raised in wonder, and then he was stifling a smile. 

“Let’s try this again,” she whispered. “You and I, Juggie. What do you say?”

His kiss told her he wanted that, too. 

******************

When she found herself encased in his arms, whispering words of love and desire as they kissed and made love in the dim light of Jughead’s room, she felt whole. She felt at home. And when hours later, she was clinging to his body from behind him, his motorcycle beneath them and the wind rushing against their bodies, she was smiling, wondering how she had gone without this for so long. 

They were running away. Sort of. It felt like it, only, they had told everyone where they were going, and that it had been a few weeks since the called-off wedding. 

She’d had that time to sit down with Phillip, to return his ring, to tell him she was sorry for waiting to the last minute to call the wedding off. She had dealt with the anguish she had caused him, and the humiliation she had caused Alice.

She had taken on the task of returning all the gifts that were sent to them, along with apologies to the ones who had taken time out of their lives to supposedly celebrate with them. 

She also told Phillip she couldn’t be sorry about actually calling it off. She wasn’t sorry about that, because her heart had never been in it. 

“I thought it was,” she explained, softly. “I really did. I believed so hard that I loved you, but I suppose when you have to work at it…”

Phillip was heartbroken. There was no easy way to describe it, and he left their conversation without a word. 

Later, the few things she owned that were at Phillip’s apartment were left in a box outside her townhouse door. It was an eye-openingly small box. 

“Not that I’m complaining,” Jughead had said. “Just curious--you never moved in together?”

She shook her head, picking up the scarf that was at the bottom of the box. “Not really. I mean, I stayed over at his place often enough, but I kept saying that I wanted to keep my townhouse. I own it. Bought it. It’s mine and it felt wrong to give it up.”

His arms slid around her body from behind. “You should never have to give up a part of yourself for anything, babe.”

His neck kisses thrilled her, and she closed her eyes to savor the feel of his lips. She could never resist his advances, not even the smallest and lightest ones. 

In spite of the aftermath of the failed wedding, Betty felt light of heart. Seeing Jughead almost everyday, touching him and being with him filled her with joy. Her face might have ached from smiling so much, at one point. 

Now they were riding to Cape Cod. It wasn’t a long drive--about an hour from Boston. It was just a day trip, but Jughead wanted to walk along the beach and see some lighthouses. 

As they basked under the sun, the sand beneath them, Jughead handed her a thick stack of bound papers. 

“Interested in some new reading material?” he asked. 

She looked up from the book she already had. “What’s that?”

“Manuscript. Book three.”

Her eyes bugged out and she snatched her dark glasses off. “That’s book three of your series.”

“Yep.”

She dove for it, making to grab it from his hands. “Gimme!”

He laughed but yanked it away, just out of reach. “You have to be completely honest with me.”

“I promise! Now give it to me!”

She had been a fan of his work, no doubt, but she never quite let on to anyone how much. She didn’t want anyone to suspect that she was still pining for him. She hadn’t realized that her love for him was so hard to contain until she was letting it all out and living it, free of what used to constrain it. 

She devoured his manuscript. 30 minutes in and she dug a pen out of her purse and began to mark it. She could hear him laughing in the background, but she ignored it. When she felt his hands applying sunblock on her back and legs, she whined that he shouldn’t distract her. When finally he teased that he wanted to go for a swim in the shark infested waters, she relented, but she talked about the manuscript the entire time.

In the afternoon, they drove to different lighthouses, and Jughead was hilariously underwhelmed.

“Well, what did you expect?” she asked, laughing, as they sat at the foot of the famous Nauset, Cape Cod lighthouse--their third one on their itinerary.

“I don’t know. A weathered retired sailor with a bunch of mysterious and fascinating stories to tell? Seashore legends? _ Something _.”

“Were you hoping to investigate something on our trip, perhaps?”

His eyes lit. “Oh, yeah. We used to do that a lot, didn’t we?”

And it hit her, then, just how many years they lost, being apart. How many things had changed with him and with her.

There were little things over the course of the last few weeks that were different about them, how they liked certain things done and made, how coffee wasn’t just black for him anymore, how she liked to have some wine after dinner, how he actually went to the gym, how the plaid and beanie were less likely to be on him, and how her ponytail rarely made an appearance.

They weren’t deal-breakers by any means. At their core, she and Jughead were the same. The things they loved about each other were the same, and the things that were different about them made her feel like they were starting fresh—dating from the beginning, which was exciting and new without the nervousness that came with meeting a stranger.

But she couldn’t deny her longing for those missed years. How she wished she knew why he had a certain attitude about certain things because they grew into it together, rather than have it be a surprise and leave her wondering a million possibilities.

It felt like there was so much to make up for and sometimes the thought was overwhelming.

Perhaps even frightening. They were giddy and in love now, but what if in a couple of months, they realized they had changed way too much, that their time apart had made them new people that didn’t quite fit together?

“Betty, are you okay?” 

His voice cut through her panicked thoughts. She met his gaze and she could tell he already knew the answer. 

No matter what happened, it seemed, they would always know each other well, and that thought eased her anxieties immediately. She breathed, and she managed a smile. “How different do you think we’ve become through the years, Jug?”

He seemed surprised by the question, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he looped an arm around her shoulders, his hand caressing her arm. “I don’t know. Why? Are you--are you having second thoughts about us?”

Her eyes widened and she immediately shifted to cup his face in her hands, pressing a kiss on his lips to reassure him that this wasn’t about that. 

The easy way they fit into each other seemed to wash the tension from both their bodies. 

When they eased apart, Betty looked into his eyes as she said, “I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than this, but those years we were apart--the thought of it scares me a little. What have we become in that time? Would it make a difference? Good or bad? I just--I want you to be happy being with me. I want this second chance to be perfect.”

“Betty,” he interrupted gently, pushing some hair that had gotten on her forehead. “I am already happy being with you. And this second chance… _ doesn’t _have to be perfect, but we’ll figure it out. You said it yourself. We’re better together.”

It doesn’t have to be perfect. 

She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, and the weight on her shoulders began to feel all the more lighter. She realized that her thoughts were falling back in her coping mechanisms--problem solving, situation assessment, process improvement--things she had to do to get over her regret, loneliness, and heartbreak. It occurred to her that her previous state of mind was only now realizing that the things that used to hold her down were no longer hindrances to her dreams. 

This. Being with Jughead, having an easy, instinctive rapport with ones partner, being with someone who knew her truth and loved her for it, was going to be her new normal. 

She wasn’t trying to stay afloat anymore. This was her, with Jughead, feet on solid ground, the sand making smooth patterns along the surface of the beach, feeling the granules between her toes and fingers, laughing as some of it got on her hair, her face, and listening to the gently lapping waves in the distance. 

It felt little like coming home to harbor. 

She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close so she could nestle her face in that nook between his neck and shoulder. 

He sighed, kissing the top of her head. “We’ll weather whatever storm comes our way.”

She loved this seafaring mood they were both in. 

Whether the earth was beneath their feet, or they were lost at sea, if they had each other’s hand to hold, they had nothing to be afraid of. 

  
_fin_


End file.
